Currently, there are many different devices on the market that have the ability to display images. Most of these devices serve other purposes as well. Commercial products for displaying images include digital picture frames (such as the SMART PICTURE FRAME by KODAK, that cooperates with the STORYBOX network, and digital picture frames by DIGI-FRAME), pocket/hand-held computers, cell phones, and personal computers (PCs). Certain devices, such as FOTOSHOW digital image center by IOMEGA, have the ability to render images via a television screen.
Complicating the user experience, these various image display devices have a spectrum of display characteristics and image data format requirements. Different devices generally render images at different resolutions utilizing different formatting options. For example, a digital picture frame may be able to display an image at a resolution of 640×480 pixels in 24-bit color, while a hand-held computer may at best be able to render an image at a resolution of 320×240 pixels in 8-bit color. Support for many other options also varies from one device to another. For example, some, but not all, devices provide support for embedded thumbnails (thumbnail images inside the image file) for a more efficient user experience. The varying image processing and rendering capabilities are often tied to the memory capacity and processing characteristics of a device, but may also be the result of other design choices and compromises.
In addition to the various format options and special features, all of which may be referred to using the umbrella term “format settings”, that may be supported, most devices also support image transfer to or from one or more devices. Thus, there are generally different devices and locations to which an image file may be saved from a particular device such as a PC. Parameters associated with image files such as size, resolution, compression, embedded meta-data (such as thumbnails), bit depth, etc., can affect this image data file size and the overall quality of the rendered image.
Because different devices support varying format options and special features, the currently available general methods for manipulating and transferring image data require the execution of many steps in a number of application programs. For example, to first manipulate image data, a user can choose from among a plethora of image manipulation software, such as PICTURE IT! by MICROSOFT and ADOBE PHOTOSHOP. These and other graphic manipulation programs allow editing and manipulation of images, but require a user to separately specify format information each and every time that the user saves an image, even when the user saves the same image multiple times for use on multiple devices. There currently does not exist an image editing and manipulation application that allows a user to easily and automatically apply format settings to an image at save time. There are programs (such as DEBABELIZER) that allow batch image processing operations to be performed through scripting, and there are ways with the standard programs mentioned above that one can create “Macros” of manipulation functions to perform image processing. However, both of these techniques require deep knowledge of the applications being used to perform the manipulation and as such are out of the reach of most casual users.
In addition, existing graphic editing and manipulation applications do not provide a mechanism for transferring an image from a device or location to a new device or location while applying formatting rules that a user had previously specified. Thus, even applications that allow data manipulation, such as cropping, resizing, padding, adding borders, etc., force a user to set pertinent rules each and every time that the user wishes to save the image. They also force the user to “save” the image to the hard disk and ultimately use some other means to transfer the image to the target device.
One example of such a graphical manipulation program is PHOTOSHOP. In PHOTOSHOP a user can graphically manipulate and edit image files. However, the user must choose from palettes, brush options, cropping options, etc., after the image is selected. For example, the user might choose a background first. Then the user can go to a different menu to choose brush options, and still a different menu for cropping options. Then the user must, for example, save the image to a disk specifying image compression settings. The user then ultimately must use a different application to transfer the image data to another display device such as another PC. Finally, if the user wants to save another image with the same formatting, they must repeat the above steps even when the target device, such as a pocket PC, is the same. When using PHOTOSHOP, an advanced user might create a “macro” to repeat these image processing operations, but this is both difficult to learn and cumbersome to set up.
DEBABELIZER is very similar to PHOTOSHOP. However, unlike PHOTOSHOP, it does not require a graphical program to manipulate an image, but rather requires scripting on the part of the user. DEBABELIZER is a program that allows a user to perform a range of script-based image-processing operations through batch processing. It has image manipulation tools for canvas resizing and scaling, as well as commands to flip, rotate, and crop images. In addition, a user can set specific settings for intensity, contrast, gamma, hue, saturation, and brightness controls for later use. However, DEBABELIZER does not allow a user to save manipulation settings without the use of a script. DEBABELIZER, a program designed for business level automated digital media processing, does not provide the ease of use necessary to allow an unsophisticated user to quickly and simply execute image manipulation and transfer.
There are similar shortcomings in graphical “photo album” and thumbnail manipulation applications. THUMBSPLUS by CERIOUS SOFTWARE executes various types of thumbnail manipulation. For example, THUMBSPLUS can create thumbnails corresponding to files, either automatically or manually, allowing a user to: (1) specify a thumbnail view from customizable views; (2) customize these views; and (3) create galleries of thumbnails. These galleries in THUMBSPLUS can be displayed together in files as a graphical photo album. Manipulation programs such as THUMBSPLUS generally allow images to be defined by file name. In addition, they allow basic image formatting, such as adjusting color, rotating, resizing, overlaying images or text, filtering, cropping, and adding backgrounds, for different sizes and resolutions through a save dialog. However, such applications are normally limited to processing image files with certain size and resolution characteristics. In addition, to the extent that THUMBSPLUS allows thumbnail graphical manipulation, it is not generally applicable in that it only allows manipulation of thumbnails. These applications are also tailored to viewing images on computers in browser applications, and are inapplicable to a wider variety of devices.
As described briefly above, after a user has spent the time necessary to edit and manipulate an image in a first program, the user generally must then use a second program to transfer the image data to another display device. Sometimes specific display devices such as the DIGI-FRAME are shipped with applications that facilitate integration of image data onto the specific device. However, these applications are normally crude, rarely contain formatting rules, and are greatly limited because they are device specific.
The STORYBOX NETWORK, which supports KODAK's SMART PICTURE FRAME, does allow a user to schedule delivery of photographs though a modem to the display frame. The SMART PICTURE FRAME is set by default to download images from a user's account on the Internet (into which the user previously uploaded images) in the STORYBOX NETWORK at 6:30 A.M. daily. A user can change this setting, and may have the Frame connect to the network up to four times per day. However, there is only very limited user control available in this system. In fact, the only control exercised by the user is over whose images are in his account on the network and the schedule on which images are downloaded. In addition, the user must go to a separate web site to exercise the limited control that he has over the pictures that are received. Further, while this application will size the image before downloading it to the frame, it is very limited because images first must be loaded to a specific site, a user does not have substantial control over which images are sent at each scheduled time or at the end of each scheduled interval, and it only works with this device in this limited capacity.